"From the opening section, set in Sarajevo in 1940, to the final section, set in Seville in 1480, (People of the Book) show(s) Brooks writing at her very best. With equal authority she depicts the struggles of a young girl to escape the Nazis, a duel of wits between an inquisitor and a rabbi living in the Venice ghetto, and a girl's passionate relationship with her mistress in a harem. Like the illustrations in the Haggadah, each of these sections transports the reader to a fully realized, vividly peopled world. And each gives a glimpse of both the long history of anti-Semitism and of the struggle of women toward…independence." - Publisher’s Weekly

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after, he traveled the flooded streets in a second hand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. But, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared.

Isabel Spellman, the uncompromising—okay, obstinate—twenty-eight year-old San Francisco private eye in Lisa Lutz's riotous debut novel, The Spellman Files has her share of problems. Equal parts Sam Spade and Bridget Jones, she's a damn good investigator—if only her dysfunctional family would back off and let her do her thing.

Little Bee, a young Nigerian refugee, has just been released from the British immigration detention center where she has been held under horrific conditions for the past two years, after narrowly escaping a traumatic fate in her homeland of Nigeria.

Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.